To make her point about her support of the bill, Flores told the Assembly Education Committee that she had an abortion when she was 16. It was an emotional moment, but not the only one in a hearing that lasted for hours.

Flores, who is a Rancho High graduate, told the hearing that her mother left the family when Flores was nine years old. From there, it was up to her father to work two jobs to support her and her sisters.

Sex education was hard to come by, Flores said.

“I learned from the very little education that I received in school and again, through relationships that I had growing up,” Flores said.

Sex education was lacking and it had a major impact in the Flores family.

“I had six other sisters, all of them became pregnant in their teens – all of them,” Flores said. “One was 14 years old when she got pregnant with twins. That is what I had to learn from.”

Flores had dreams and ambitions as a teen. She did not want to be a teen mom. Statistics presented at Monday’s meeting showed the difficulty teen moms face.

In Nevada, teen birth rates among blacks were double for that of white teens. For latinas, it’s triple of that for white teens.

It’s tough to get out of poverty if you are a teen mom. It’s tough to finish your education if you are a teen mom.

“I always said that I was the only one who didn’t have kids in their teen-aged years,” Flores said, referring to her family. “That’s because at 16, I got an abortion and it was a very difficult thing for me to do.

“Now in retrospect, if I could go back and be on birth control – or better yet – learn to fill my life with something else, other than having the attention of a man in the non-healthy relationship, I would have preferred to do that, if someone would have talked to me about it.”

Flores is a proponent for the sex education bill because without proper sex education, she fears other teens will suffer the same consequences she did.

It was difficult for her to go to her father, tell him she was pregnant and ask for money to get the abortion. It was apparent that she has strong and unpleasant memories of that time of her life.

“I didn’t want to be like that (teen mom)," Flores said. “I wanted to do better and I knew I couldn’t do that if I had a baby, just like everyone else (in my family). My dad gave me the money and I went with a friend of mine (to have the abortion) and I will never forget that, having that done.”

Flores said she didn’t regret having the abortion. Clearly, however, it was difficult to talk about it.

“I don’t regret it,” Flores said. “I don’t regret it because I am here (at the Legislature), making a difference, at least in my mind, for the young ladies and letting them know their options. They can do things not to be in the situation I was in, to prevent it.

“And so how do we prevent this? We prevent by education," Flores said. "We prevent by giving them the information and the resources that they need, so they don’t have to go to their dad and say, ‘I need $200 for an abortion.’

“So I wholeheartedly support this because this is an epidemic that is affecting so many of our young people. And I am here today because I did not have the burden of raising children (as a teen).

That is not to say that they cannot be successful if you have children in your teenage years, you can. But it is that much more difficult.

“I just want to convey to you that yes, parenting is absolutely important and we have to support that. But we also have to think about so many of our kids who do not have that support. And so many of these kids who, just like me, are going through that.”

On the flip side, my mother has 6 daughters and taught us all about birth control along with the birds and the bees, when we were young and at age appropriate levels as we grew up . Sex is somethig all grownups do and you need to be honest and responsible with your sex life is the message we got. None of us had children before we were married. all of us were adults when we got pregnant. Pretending sex is a shamful secret and hiding the info from teens is a recipie for disaster.

SOOOOO why wasn't adoption an option? It was keep the baby or kill it?? Those were the only two options? If you want to talk about REALLY giving teenage girls options then do it!! Abortion is not the only alternative to being a teen mom!!

While adoption is an option for some pregnant girls, it may not always be. A 16yr old girl going through a pregnancy will still have a lot of effects on her life and health that will make completing school and keeping up a high academic standard extremely difficult, and any extra curriculars impossible. This is especially so in single parent house holds and low income house holds. And that is without complications that many girls suffer though pregnancies.
And she did not "kill" a baby. She ended a pregnancy before it became a baby.

Wow, Holly, was that a reflexive response, assuming that she didn't consider adoption? How do you know she didn't consider adoption? We only know what she chose. The point she was making is education about human sexuality, relationships, family planning would have possibly prevented the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy in the first place. We

Kae Oz : The anti-abortion movement is bunk; it has nothing to do with another life. If it did, they would protest IVF clinics and hospitals that enforce DNR orders. There are other circumstances in which somebody with no functional brain is cut off from life support and nobody screams about that. The entire anti-choice side is predicated on an obvious lie; they are NOT pro-life.

A career in the legislature trumps the life of a child. Who knows what that child would have achieved and the mark he/she would have made in this world. But that is irrelevant. For this lady, it is all about her. Narcissist.

“Now in retrospect, if I could go back and be on birth control – or better yet – learn to fill my life with something else, other than having the attention of a man in the non-healthy relationship, I would have preferred to do that, if someone would have talked to me about it.”

Very good!

So I take it then that no one will take issue with that message being put front and center in to the new sex education curriculum.

So, instead of keeping her legs closed, this slut decided to kill an innocent life? Despicable. Funny, we didn't have much in the way of school funded sex ed growing up and almost no one I know got pregnant, and the very few that did didn't murder their children. Maybe if her parents had been even half-way decent parents, none of them would have gotten knocked up.

I'm sorry, but her situation does not sound like a lack of education, but of choice. Her 14 year old sister got pregnant with twins, yet she still chose to have sex as a young teen-especially when she had "dreams and ambitions" outside of getting married and having babies? 'Doesn't sound like she was lacking in education; she was lacking in self-control and doesn't want to admit it.

Yes it was a choice. Education and honest information help empower us in our choices. She did not have that. And that was her point in sharing her story.

Do you really think teen girls have sex and get pregnant simply because they can not control their sexual drive? There is much more to it than that. There is pressure, confusion, curiosity, love, and misinformation, as well as natural sexual desire. And without the education and tools to approach these things from a healthy stand point, decisions that are not always the best are made. Heck, they are teenagers. They are going to experiment and do dumb things. They jump off roofs, drive too fast, eat terrible things, ditch class, try drugs, they do the wrong things for the right reasons and the right things for the wrong. And yes, they have sex. They do not have a fully developed sense of consequences or mortality. They are impulsive. And it is adults jobs to give them what they need to get them through their teens into adulthood as unscathed as possible. Good, comprehensive information is one of the things they need.

Rachel Rekowski "If she was properly educated ..." I wish the lady went into more detail about what she was actually taught & when. With the “I learned from the very little education that I received in school..." line (focus on the quotes, not the reporter's interpretive sentences), there must have been something.

Rachel Rekowski Exactly. If she had had half-way decent parents, she wouldn't have gotten pregnant at 16. So her parents fail and we're supposed to just paint over her murdering a child for convenience?

To complete as to what I was saying the young ladies being the ones at fault We should also talk about the young men and to them The young men that are as much involved , need to keep their urges in check , probably even more so
They need to stand up and take responsibility also
The young ladies really shouldn't have to bare the brunt of this discussion
Remember it still takes two to tango

About this blog

Ray Hagar is the political reporter for the Reno Gazette-Journal and a fifth-generation Nevadan. Hagar is also a co-host for the Nevada Newsmakers statewide television program. He is the co-author of "Johnson-Jeffries: Dateline Reno," a book about the 1910 "Fight of the Century" in Reno that pitted black world champion Jack Johnson against the "Great White Hope," Jim Jeffries